There is no oil for the lamps.
“What is truth?” said Pilate; and then, like me, he pissed off quick for fear he got an answer. Well, I shall just tell you: Truth is a very grey area; very, very grey.
I mention Pilate because oftentimes at Cambridge, I would dream of the Roman goddess Levana and wonder when her bestowed gifts would kick in. It was my Jesuit schooling impinging you see. I am positive it would have totally buggered up a lesser man. Made him shifty and withdrawn perhaps. Not me. You see, by then I had developed a strategy to cope:drugs and cunning.
My panacea, my φαρμακον νηπενθες, * was and is, strong drink and the Jesuits taught me the cunning.
The upshot is, that by my clever deployment of what might be called "turning the cat in the pan", certain things have come to light; it turns out that I am not to blame after all for our local difficulties in Araby and am to be sent back like Gandalf the White, to finish off what weak men could only begin. I am sent back out to Saudi, v soon. Can’t wait. Before you know it, I’ll be in the compound rumpus room playing Islamic bingo.

We have a local bingo caller, (works for Mecca).

“Right guys and guys, eyes cast down for a full house…

Eye for an eye…number one,
Clicketty click…car-bomb timer,
All the ones…nine-eleven
Number eight…old enough
Seven and six…seventysix, strokes of the lash, was she worth it?
Four-oh…virgins in paradise
Number ten…British pig dog Satan
Number nine…Mullah’s orders
Eighty eight…two fat ladies, how can you tell?
Six and nine...sixty-nine…oral sex
Top of the house...ninety-nine...beard of the Prophet…”

* “drug banishing sorrow” pronounced pharmacon nehpenthes.